From Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker comes a comprehensive article attempting to determine the cause of increased obesity in America. She talks about portion sizes:
In the early nineteen-sixties, a man named David Wallerstein was running a chain of movie theatres in the Midwest and wondering how to boost popcorn sales. Wallerstein had already tried matinÃ©e pricing and two-for-one specials, but to no avail. According to Greg Critser… one night the answer came to him: jumbo-sized boxes. Once Wallerstein introduced the bigger boxes, popcorn sales at his theatres soared, and so did those of another high-margin item, soda.
A decade later, Wallerstein had retired from the movie business and was serving on McDonaldâ€™s board of directors when the chain confronted a similar problem. Customers were purchasing a burger and perhaps a soft drink or a bag of fries, and then leaving. How could they be persuaded to buy more? Wallersteinâ€™s suggestionâ€”a bigger bag of friesâ€”was greeted skeptically by the companyâ€™s founder, Ray Kroc. Kroc pointed out that if people wanted more fries they could always order a second bag.
â€œBut Ray,â€ Wallerstein is reputed to have said, â€œthey donâ€™t want to eat two bagsâ€”they donâ€™t want to look like a glutton.â€ Eventually, Kroc let himself be convinced; the rest, as they say, is supersizing.
Something called “conditioned hypereating”:
Kessler spends a lot of time meeting with (often anonymous) consultants who describe how they are trying to fashion products that offer whatâ€™s become known in the food industry as â€œeatertainment.â€ Fat, sugar, and salt turn out to be the crucial elements in this quest: different â€œeatertainingâ€ items mix these ingredients in different but invariably highly caloric combinations. A food scientist for Frito-Lay relates how the company is seeking to create â€œa lot of fun in your mouthâ€ with products like Nacho Cheese Doritos, which meld â€œthree different cheese notesâ€ with lots of salt and oil. Another product-development expert talks about how she is trying to â€œunlock the code of craveability,â€ and a third about the effort to â€œcram as much hedonics as you can in one dish.â€
Kessler invents his own termâ€”â€œconditioned hypereatingâ€â€”to describe how people respond to these laboratory-designed concoctions. Foods like Cinnabons and Starbucksâ€™ Strawberries & CrÃ¨me Frappuccinos are, he maintains, like drugs: â€œConditioned hypereating works the same way as other â€˜stimulus responseâ€™ disorders in which reward is involved, such as compulsive gambling and substance abuse.â€ For Kessler, the analogy is not merely rhetorical: research on rats, he maintains, proves that the animalsâ€™ brains react to sweet, fatty foods the same way that addictsâ€™ respond to cocaine. A reformed overeater himselfâ€”â€œI have owned suits in every size,â€ he writesâ€”Kessler advises his readers to eschew dieting in favor of a program that he calls Food Rehab. The principles of Food Rehab owe a lot to those of drug rehab, except that it is not, as Kessler acknowledges, advisable to swear off eating altogether. â€œThe substitute for rewarding food is often other rewarding food,â€ he writes, though what could compensate for the loss of Nacho Cheese Doritos he never really explains.
And she also addresses the fat acceptance movement:
According to the authors of â€œThe Fat Studies Reader,â€ the real problem isnâ€™t the sudden surge in obesity in this country but the surge in stories about obesity. Weight, by their account, is, like race or sex or bone structure, a biological trait over which individuals have noâ€”or, in the case of fat, very limitedâ€”control. A â€œsocietal fat phobia,â€ Natalie Boero, a sociology professor at San Jose State University, writes, â€œin part explains why the â€˜obesity epidemicâ€™ is only now beginning to be critically deconstructed.â€
Undeniably, the fatâ€”the authors of â€œThe Readerâ€ are adamant advocates for the â€œfâ€ wordâ€”are subject to prejudice and even cruelty. A 2008 report by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, at Yale, noted that teachers consistently hold lower expectations of overweight children, and that three out of five of the heaviest kids have been teased at school. The same people who are repelled by racist or misogynistic humor seem to feel that it is perfectly acceptable to make fat jokes.
But, just because size bias exists it doesnâ€™t follow that putting on weight is a subversive act. In contrast to the fieldâ€™s claims about itself, fat studies ends up taking some remarkably conservative positions. It effectively allies itself with McDonaldâ€™s and the rest of the processed-food industry, while opposing the sorts of groups that advocate better school-lunch programs and more public parks. To claim that some people are just meant to be fat is not quite the same as arguing that some people are just meant to be poor, but it comes uncomfortably close.
It’s all brainy and New Yorker-y and there’s a lot going on and I don’t even know where to begin. You guys are smart, you try!
Posted by mo pie